


I am yours (and I am mine)

by TLvop



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-23 18:02:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8337451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TLvop/pseuds/TLvop
Summary: Nick Fury, and the issue of soulmates.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reeby10](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reeby10/gifts).



1.

Nick didn't think much about bonds before he was six years old and scared at his friend's house. He didn't have any markings on his hands, but sometimes they appeared at birth and sometimes they came by later – if your bond wasn't born yet, or if you'd taken longer than usual to "settle". His Aunt Lacey had to wait a full seven years before his momma was born, and fifteen more before she had the money and credentials to come all the way out to Oakland from D.C., working on a _train_ for part of it. So, being six and without any replies to the occasional comments he'd write, curious and careful, on the inside of his wrist didn't really mean anything worth worrying about.

But then he and Juanita are kicking around the ball like they usually do on Thursdays, waiting for Juanita's momma to bring out the laundry to hang, or Nick's auntie to show up, whichever happens first.

He kicks the ball at Juanita from the corner of the yard, but she doesn't respond. She's staring at her arm, brow wrinkled, so he jogs towards her. Letters are appearing on her skin, in a shiny black ink, all in fancy cursive. 

Nick's the reader of the two of them, so after a moment of him watching the letters form upside-down, Juanita holds her arm out to him a little reluctantly, because he's going to have to block her view of the letters to read them right.

"'Hello,'" Nick reads, and then hesitates. The cursive is much fancier than his granddad's, in the letters he sends from D.C. like clockwork. "That's an 'of,'" he says, pointing to a word halfway through. The f's very curly, almost an s.

"I knew that," Juanita says, jerking her arm back. She looks down at it, and Nick backs away, a little offended. He was just _helping_.

Mrs. Winters opens up the door, bringing out the laundry she'd promised to let them help hang up, a whole basketful and a bunch of little wood clothes pins that look like toy soldiers. "What are you kids talking about?"

Juanita's face twists, and she pulls at her sleeve, catching Mrs. Winters' attention immediately. Her eyes focus on the words, and she puts the basket down, going pale. Nick looks away – at the wispy sort of clouds, and tries to pretend he's thinking about rain instead of the quiet, maybe even scared, " _Mija_ , did this just happen? Did you write back?"

"No," Juanita says, quiet and unhappy. "I didn't do _anything_ , momma. Nick just tried to read it, but he _couldn't_."

Nick looks back, shoulders bunching up, not sure if he should say sorry, but Mrs. Winters smiles at him a bit when he does. She's hugging her daughter close to her, and her smile doesn't look at all happy. 

("Why wouldn't you be happy?" he asks his momma, later, when she tucks him in to sleep before going to the hospital for her night shift. The story he tells is simple, and to the point – his momma is busy, and he's had time to think it through.

She pushes hair back from his forehead, and smiles at him a little. She's not entirely happy, either. "Because not every bond's Lacey, sweetheart. They're strangers."

"They aren't bad," Nick says, unhappy. The idea that they might be sits wrong.

"No," his momma says. "But you can't trust them.")

You're not supposed to ask about bonds, so Nick doesn't. It's rude. But Juanita doesn't say anything, either, and she only wears long sleeves after that.

He doesn't ask anyone. But he looks at his own arms, and he worries.

2.

Even after eight months of knowing Phil Coulson – knowing there are layers under his wide eyed friendliness and frankly disturbing depth of knowledge on comic books – Nick can't stop thinking of Phil Coulson as a kid. It's awkward, now that the man saved his life.

"—and then _Burns_ says," Coulson breaks through Nick's pain-medicated fuzz. After a moment, Nick remembers asking him to talk about his favorite episode of MASH.

"Wait," he says, and Coulson stops, looking at him carefully. "Are you... supposed to be in here?"

"Nah," Coulson says, and hesitates for a long few moments, before holding his arm up crookedly. It's covered by his sleeve, but Nick understands the gesture. "I asked how to pick the lock."

All Nick knows about Coulson's bond, regs uncharacteristically upheld, is that: he has one, and that he or she is a Mountie. That's the rumor, at least, and the packages Coulson gets every now and then are through the RCMP. Also, his bond's mom makes fantastic cookies in quantities large enough to demand sharing. Nick doesn't know anyone who could afford that much in shipping costs.

His IV drips, and he listens to it for a long few moments. "Are you dating?"

"Are you interested?" Coulson replies, too quick, and Nick snorts. Coulson grins, a little relieved and a little awkward, and looks down.

After a moment, sincere even though everyone else ignores the regs when it comes to bonds: "I shouldn't've asked, sorry."

Coulson's eyes squint, a little, and he looks back up at Nick. He plays with his sleeve for a long moment. "I think we know each other too well. And... if it didn't work out, that'd fuck everything up."

Phil Coulson's a kid, but he's one of the good ones. He'd say the Ranger Corp is full of good ones, but even floating on pain meds, Nick can't justify that sort of optimism.

3\. 

Nick's in the front office of a small consulting firm that he's given to understand is currently a front for the Strategic Homeland Intervention and Logistics Division, because they're not stupid enough to use their actual facilities for interviews.

Or so he understands, from the low-key invitation from one of his former superiors. He's had other invitations, been to other interviews, but he's keeping his options open. The CIA thinks a little too highly of itself, in his opinion.

Five minutes before his interview time, a woman comes out to greet him, and he stands. Her hair is cut into a military-appropriate bob, and she walks with the casual confidence of someone who's pretty confident she could floor him. It's not an attitude he's come to be familiar with, since his late teens. It's... disconcerting. In organizations like SHIELD, people don't fuck around.

"Nicholas Fury?" she asks, purely for the appearance of it, and he nods. She smiles, a little, and extends her hand. "Agent Melinda May. I'm your character witness."

Nick hesitates for a long moment, trying to place her in his memory. She's in her late twenties or early thirties, of Chinese background. Did he know any May families, growing up? "I'm sorry," he says. "I don't remember us meeting."

"We haven't," she says, and smirks at his confusion as she turns around to guide him back to the interview rooms. "I know Phil Coulson." She glances over her shoulder. "And I worked as a mounted police officer until last year."

 _Oh_. Oh. Shit.

No wonder Phil was always so cagey about his bond. As friendly as she's being, Nick wouldn't want to do anything to get on Melinda May's bad side, either.

4\. 

Nick's in California, waiting for a meeting with Margaret Carter and Howard Stark. He's easier to move across the globe than they are. He's shaving slowly, and carefully. This isn't a first impression, but it may be a promotion, and Nick's always responded to nerves by getting real calm.

Or blowing up, but that's only as necessary.

Blue springs up on the back of his right hand, and he hesitates before setting his razor down. He runs his left hand along the side of his chin, checking for if there's more than just the suspicion of stubble, as he watches his hand.

In confident strokes, long and short intermixed, a stylized flower springs into existence. Blue, with red highlights and black dots on the interior. At home, growing up, Nick saw this so many times -- his mother or Lacey's palms covered with short love-notes. But still, his skin itches at the sense that there should be a paintbrush on his skin.

He has a bond. He's _thirty_ , and he has a bond. By now he'd assumed they had died when they were young.

His alarm goes off, and he goes to re-set it, digging in his bag for his Polaroid camera, and snaps a picture of it, before taking out a pair of driving gloves. 

He already has a reputation for having a strange fashion sense. He breathes carefully through his nose, and rolls his shoulders back. He can worry about this later.

5.

Nick's uncomfortable with the concept of tradition, but after ten years there's little else he can call his careful tracking of when dawn is in the area around Volgograd. He assumes, from the art-style on his hand, and feels this assumption is justified by his observation of his bond's schedule. He finds privacy, if he can, and rolls up his sleeve to read his bond's carefully written _Good morning!_ s, her Cyrillic letters neatening by the day. He assumes _her_ – drawings of flowers and dragonflies and cats and rocket ships chasing down his arm at times seem to indicate it, but he's never been an expert in children.

In the evening, after school and likely after supper, he gets short opinions on the reading of the day – mostly Sherlock Holmes stories, or science fiction titles he's never heard of and can only assume are Russian. He notes them down in one of his low-priority notebooks, lists of book titles likely enough to make some spy frustrated with the assumption it's a code. He hasn't made the time to read a single one. He has, of course, never replied .The world hangs on a thread, the world _always_ hangs on a thread, and increasingly it's Nick Fury's responsibility to keep it there.

But he appreciates the connection to the outside world.

When he gets home from a flight, he finds a thick-inked drawing of a cat napping, curled up in the crook of his elbow, and he smiles.

It's gone when he gets out of the shower. Not gone as in smudged off, not gone like a ten-year-old had scrubbed at a drawing she'd drawn too dark, and left little whorls of ink across the skin. Gone like it'd never been there.

Nick breathes deeply, trying to understand. There should be an explanation other than _she's dead_ , she could have found rubbing alcohol (which she's never used before), or just washed it beyond his ability to see on his skin, or –

His skin is _clean_ , like the shower wiped it clear, like it is his own.

He's on the phone, calling Phil, before he catches up to what he's doing. He's almost relieved, when he hears the answering machine.  
"Fact of the week: A small child could swim through the veins of a blue whale. Someone told me that yesterday, and I can't stop thinking about it. Anyway, leave a message!"

"Phil," Nick says, and stops. "I landed safely. See you at work."

The world is always hanging on a thread. He has work to do.

6.

He found himself looking obsessively at his skin for the first few months, in free moments, trying to find hidden notes behind his elbows or on his knees. After ten long years of silence, he barely looks at skin aside from his face at all, beyond what shows up in the corners of his vision. There's no hidden anticipation, like in his youth, and no curiosity like in his 30s. He knows what his skin looks like, and the only person who needs to care about something changing on it is his doctor.

He pulls his shirt off to change into a button up. He doesn't make concessions for many things – he's busy saving the damn world, especially now that he's in charge of this organization – but funerals? He'll make as many concessions as he can.

He hesitates, tracing his finger across the skin two inches under his left collarbone, just over his heart. There's something there, and he can feel his heart beating under his hand as he goes to the mirror, grabbing his button-up and undershirt on the way.

In small, no-nonsense letters, in a sort of tannish-pink, there's a word in roman letters. It says _mine_.

It's red, around the edges, inflamed with the freshness of the tattoo.

She's alive. He closes his eyes, and shuts his mouth, and doesn't pray as he stands there for a long few moments. She's _alive_.

He wants to grab a marker, to write a response – does she need help? Is she all right? _Hello, don't scare me like that again?_ But he's not just a spy, any more. He's the leader of spies. He can't compromise his anonymity.

And she's a stranger. He needs to perform his duties for his subordinates, and his friends.

He opens his mouth, and breathes, shaking his head, and puts the new shirts on. It seems like he can only ever worry about things like this later, which in a world this busy means he doesn't get the chance at all.

7.

Nick hates paperwork, and all Barton is making for him these days is paperwork and uncomfortable discussions with Pierce. First he decides to treat a kill order like one of his monitoring missions, and then he goes ahead and _brings the Black Widow in_. Phil gave the preliminary agreement to the plan, but that just means he's going to tear into Phil after he tears into Barton.

If the man wasn't usually so reliable, Nick would have fired him years ago. Barton, not Phil. Phil's earned his place.

"Report," he says, hand going out, and there's a quick "director, sir," by the agent currently handling the report before she hands it over. Nick leans against the table, as space clears around him, flipping to the back with the new intake information. He's learned to tune out the uncomfortable silence of agents who are still green enough that they need to be scared to act professional.

There's a cropped photo of a tattoo in the report, the only marking on Romanoff's skin other than a gunshot scar over her hip. The tattoo shows a collar bone, and underneath it – in the color of her infrequent freckles, over her heart – the word _mine_. He goes still, and can feel his throat going dry.

Phil turns, and waves everyone out.

Nick waits for them to leave before his hands, holding a finger in the space with the photograph, drop to his sides. He looks sideways, into the room on the other side of the two-way mirror. Barton's leaning against his chair, watching both the door and the assassin who's caused so much trouble for the past five years. Her head's tilted down, looking at the reams of paperwork she's been asked to fill out, but she's watching the glass. She can't see him. He knows that.

"You think she'd be a good asset?" Nick asks, breaking eye contact.

"I think you should talk with her," Phil says. He stands sideways, so he's mostly looking through the two-way glass while still having his feet pointed towards Nick.

"No," he says, and clears his throat. "I'm going to have to recuse myself."

Phil's eyes go to him, brow furrowing. Nick sets the folder on the table, holding a finger up as he stands, and pulls the collar of his shirt down enough to show the top of the _mine_ tattooed on his chest in the pink-brown of Romanoff's freckles.

Something pained happens in Phil's face, and Nick clears his throat again, straightening his jacket cuffs as he looks away.

"Okay," Phil says, voice carefully without empathy. It's a lie, but one Nick appreciates. "I'll handle the analysis and intake."

8\. 

Nick would say he doesn't use his skin to spy on Romanoff, but of course he does. It's nothing useful – for useful updates, Laura Barton has a cellphone with only one number on it (Coulson's). It's just stupid stuff that Barton has decided to draw, and that with increasingly regularity Romanoff lets him. They're in Paris, so it's a lop-sided squirrel with a beret and coffee, which Fury only identifies after Barton adds labels to them.

She's a useful asset. She's _reliable_ , and as she begins to relax around him – she's never been an agent green enough to need fear to keep her professional – she's even started to show a streak of vindictive humor he can't help but be amused by.

But she's a spy, and she's been a spy since she was a girl. She knows he knows about her tattoo; she knows there are always rumors about whether or not she's truly loyal to SHIELD. He trusts her to be the Black Widow, which means he can never let her know that they share a skin. At best, she'd spook at the restriction. At worst, she'd assume manipulation.

(Nick's a spy, too, and he trusts himself to be one – that is, not to be trusted with ideals. If he ever lets her know, it will _be_ a manipulation, though he can't yet imagine a scenario where that would work. He's accustomed to loneliness, and he's not... without friends.)

That night, he wakes up to his phone ringing. Strike Team Delta has just asked for emergency retrieval.

"Status?" he asks, holding up his hand to see his inner arm. The squirrel's still there, though smudged to hell. Romanoff's alive, at least.

"Barton's been shot, and half-drowned, but Romanoff fished him out." Phil hesitates. "She didn't give an update on her condition."

Nick's eyes close, and he sighs. "All right. Update me in the morning."

9.

After his conversations with the World Security Council, Pierce recommends (orders) he take a vacation and Nick only somewhat reluctantly agrees.

He can't go somewhere quiet, he finds out after two days on the road. Not a single radio station, turned up to blaring, does anything other than make him hyperaware of his surroundings. Not a single stretch of road, encountered in silence, doesn't feel subtly wrong without Phil Coulson or Maria Hill beside him. And he can't convince himself Phil Coulson is back at the Triskelion, holding down the fort. Not when he knows the alien technology being used to bring him back.

(Not after Melinda May, eyes dry, turned in her resignation. She's worked for years in accounting, but this was beyond her capacity.

"I might need you," Nick said, then, and hesitated. Should he tell her?

She saw it, in his face, and her chin raised, stance broadening, like she'd have to fight him for her sanity.

"I'm trying to bring Coulson back in."

She rocked back, just a shade, confusion on her face. Then, bland enough that it was clearly a question: "He died."

"He did die." Nick rubbed his face. "I wouldn't hide that from you, Melinda." He waited, and breathed, and she let him have his silence. "I can't promise anything, but if we do bring him back, I'm going to need you."

May waited for clarification and, not getting it, stepped forward. Only long experience kept Nick from leaning back. She picked up her resignation, pulled off the paperclip, and fed the paper into the shredder. 

"Show me results in three months," she said, keeping eye contact with him. "Understood?"

He nodded, slow, and she left.)

He's not a scientist. He can't help.

He finds himself in Iowa, on Barton's farm. Laura Barton has extended an invitation to him, every time they've met, to the point that he's almost certain it's genuine. 

Her face lights up when she sees him on the porch, invites him in to where the kids are finishing their lunches, and sends them out to play.

He asks if he can stay for a few nights, and Laura smiles at him like she'd been hoping he would. (There's a quiet worry on her face, but there's a quiet worry on everyone's face. The sky opened like a door, and aliens came spilling out. And her husband was forcefully taken over by an alien force.)

"Clint's on a road trip with one of his friends," Laura says, habitually vague, like he wouldn't know she meant Romanoff, like he hadn't approved the trip in the first place. "This place is such a mess," she adds, and kicks a toy truck gently. It rolls neatly out of his path.

"I'll survive," Nick replies, a little amused. "Here, let me," he takes the kids' lunch dishes from her hands, and starts the sink. She looks surprised, then relieved, and takes a seat at the counter, picking up her still mostly full cup of coffee. "Anything interesting happening around here?"

He lets the discussion of small-town occurrences, and the ins-and-outs of farm life spill over him, as he washes and dries the dishes. 

Ten minutes in, Laura falls silent, and he looks at her. She's staring at the inside of his left elbow.  
"Clint _wouldn_ —oh," she finishes, quiet. He raises his elbow, to find a misshapen sparrow inside, with something in its beak helpfully labelled prize. Below it, in much neater handwriting is Natasha's _Delicious. Yum_.

"She's been humoring him," Laura says. She puts her coffee down. "He needs it. The kids – don't understand. I don't," she says, and smiles a little, before rubbing at her eyes. "Sorry."

"It's fine." Nick turns off the sink. He dries his hands, and hesitates. "Don't tell them?"

Laura breathes out, and nods. "Do you know anything about tractors?"

"I spent a few years in the army." He grins at her, pulling his sleeves down. "I can figure them out."

10.

He wakes up in the bunker underneath the dam they'd chosen years ago as their base of emergency operations. He's searing with pain, run through by so many bullets he's honestly shocked that they've pulled it off.

He came to Pierce with suspicions, and he got _assassinated_. Well. Not quite.

"Prognosis?" he asks the doctor, voice rough, and gets a sarcastic look in response. He smirks.

"With your injuries? You might live, if you don't make my life too hard."

When he leaves the room, to get more supplies, Maria Hill sits down in his seat. "That means he likes you."

"Does it?"

"I wrote his paycheck," she says, and smiles, "and he won't talk to me at all."

Fury narrows his eyes at her, knowing she's trying to make him laugh. Hill wrote the doctor's paycheck, because the doctor is Hill's uncle. He smirks, unwilling.

"I'm headed back into D.C.," Hill says. "I'm planning to infiltrate Strike, see if I can keep Rogers and Romanoff out of trouble."

He nods, uncomfortable, and she stands. After a moment, she hesitates, and holds her hand up as the doctor enters the door. He stops, but doesn't move backward. "Director," she says, voice quiet. "During the surgery – Romanoff saw the tattoo."

Nick blinks, staring at her, for a moment not comprehending the implications amongst all the vast machinations causing his world to come apart. "What did she say?"

"Nothing. I just – thought you should know."

He sighs, and closes his eyes briefly in acknowledgment. "Thank you. Good luck."

11.

She's by the Georgetown campus, tucked into the corner of a coffee shop with a book on linguistics like she's nothing more than a graduate student. Her hair's down, she's wearing reading glasses (with a prescription, if a mild one – a good spy doesn't use gear that is obviously fake), and she has an oversized tan sweater on. Civilian, civilian, civilian.

It's been years since Nick could pull that off so effortlessly, but he's tried his best. All artsy chic, like he's a visiting lecturer or maybe an associate professor of something like music theory. He's been getting a lot of use out of it the past couple of weeks– now that he's been given the medical all-clear, Natasha makes him come to her. She doesn't like constantly being in the open, having to look over her shoulder, and who does?

But he's the one that didn't see the infection until it was too late. He owes it, to his senior agents – they're his responsibility, whatever Rogers thinks.

He drops into the seat next to her, and she smiles at him.

"Hey," she says, and passes him a USB drive under the table. He tucks it into his sleeve.

"Hey." He clears his throat, and glances sideways at her. "I'm heading to Europe in the next week. There are... things I need to look into."

Natasha watches his face, thumb running along the rim of her coffee mug. Her fingernails are painted the same sea-green as her eyes. "Nick," she says, and it's regretful. "I – need to remember who I am. Why I'm doing this."

He nods, after a long moment. "I thought that'd be your answer," he says, honest. He'd hoped it wasn't. Maria Hill is going to work for Stark, Sharon Carter for the CIA, and SHIELD's deeper purposes are being handled by Melinda May and Phil Coulson. There are very few people left to rely on, who aren't balancing their own burdens. He taps his fingers against the table for a long few moments, and stands. "I'll see you later," he says, glancing back at her, keeping his face soft (he's not _mad_ ), and heads out. He has a USB report to read, before an appointment with an old -- well. Acquaintance.

"Nick," Natasha calls out, when he's not two strides away, voice warm and low. He turns, and she smiles at him. It's small, and as close to unguarded as she's ever directed his way. "Keep in touch."

He smiles, and turns back to the door.

The world hangs on a thread, and they all have work to do.

**Author's Note:**

> Note: I aged Nick down, and Phil & Melinda up from their actors' ages to fit in the Nick&Phil in the Rangers prompt :). Also, if you haven't seen the Nick-Natasha cut scenes from Winter Soldier, I highly recommend them!
> 
> I had so much fun writing this, and puzzling out the worldbuilding around soulmates! Thank you so much for the opportunity!


End file.
